𝐆𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐍 𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐃

𝕚𝕧. 𝕔𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝 𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕠 𝕪𝕠𝕦

touch me, someone/ i'm
too young to feel so numb
- jaymes young, "feel something"

/

Richie was nine when his mama was pregnant with her second baby.

"A girl," she announced to Richie on the couch one evening, hand gliding idly over her flat stomach. Her eyes had sparkled, the word finally never leaving her lips but there all the same. "A baby girl. You're going to have a little sister, Rich."

Richie had contemplated that, short legs dangling off the edge of the couch. "Okay," he'd said, shrugging. "Cool."

Imagining his mother as a giggly, glowing pregnant woman was hard, and not just because Richie had never seen her as one; he was well aware that her pregnancy with him hadn't been an easy one. He was a big baby, she'd always told him. "Such a burden to carry," she'd laugh, and Richie had tried not to shrink under the double meaning and bit his tongue when it threatened to let out the words: Was it worth it, though? Was I worth it?

Richie's lack of enthusiasm was more than made up for by his mother's, whose every move seemed to be a dance even as her stomach grew; she flitted from room to room light as a fairy, lighter than Richie had ever seen her. The nursery was painted and repainted in anticipation, his parents comparing paint swatches side-by-side on the floor. (What's it matter? Richie had muttered from the doorway. Pink is pink.) There had been a beautiful porcelain doll pulled from the top shelf in his mother's closet - it had belonged to her mother's mother at one point, passed down from daughter to daughter, its satiny white dress and painted pink cheeks kept in pristine condition by their careful hands.

And eventually Richie began to, despite himself, like the idea of having a sibling. Even if it was a sister. Even if it meant his presence in the house would shrink. Even if it meant his mother's attempts to connect with him would dwindle into nothingness because she was finally getting what she always wanted. He liked the idea of having another kid in the house and was excited by the thought of having someone look up to him. He dreamt of a little baby girl with dark curls like his mother's, pink-cheeked and gurgling, and smiled. How much longer? he'd ask his mother impatiently at least once a day, tugging at her shirtsleeve, and she would smile and shush him, brushing a hand through his hair. Soon, Rich. And Richie had pouted, lower lip jutting out, and whispered hurry up in there, I want to meet you to his mother's belly.

But soon came sooner than expected - Maggie Tozier went into labor three weeks too early, and Richie had sat in the waiting room with his cheek pressed against his grandma's arm, breathing in the strange perfume she always wore, a scent that wasn't unpleasant but not really pleasant, either, especially when it mixed with the intensely sterile smell of hospital chemicals. By the time father had come out of the delivery room hours later, pale-faced with red rings around his eyes, Richie was dozing.

He doesn't remember much, but he thinks maybe his father had been crying. Vaguely he can recall his grandmother weeping loudly, falling into his arms, and Richie had been left in his chair, rubbing his sleepy eyes. "What happened?" he'd asked, voice too loud in the excruciating quiet. "Where's the baby?" But his father never answered and his grandma had only wept harder, and then Richie was left confused and alone in the waiting room while the doctor pulled them aside.

Eventually the nurse from the delivery room had come and sat down next to Richie and explained, as gently as she could manage, that there would be no baby. Not anymore. Richie had been too young to fully understand it then, but the words still hit him like a kick in the chest. No more baby. No little sister. No tiny, shrieking life to fill up the nursery his mother had spent months tinkering with, arranging and rearranging.